Plan Ahead: An Evening with the Original Locavore

Kids at the city’s first Edible Schoolyard at PS 216 are taught how to harvest over 60 types of fruits, grains and vegetables. Credit: Edible Schoolyard NYC

Alice Waters, fairy godmother to the farm-to-table dining philosophy that we now hold dear, is also a champion of teaching kids good nutrition and healthy eating through gardening. She started the first Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley in 1995, and since then, she’s helped establish affiliates around the country, like the quarter-acre organic farm at P.S. 216, an elementary school in Gravesend, Brooklyn. There, kids are taught how to harvest over 60 types of fruits, grains and vegetables, and take two organic gardening classes a month, hands-on learning that will continue to grow once their state-of-the-art kitchen and four-season greenhouse is complete. You can meet the mastermind of this movement Thursday, Nov. 21, when Waters will talk about gardening and getting children to eat healthily at M.S. 88 (7th Ave and Prospect Ave.) with Michael Moss, author of Salt, Sugar, Fat. Tickets, which are $65, include a tasting and a signed copy of her new book, The Art of Simple Cooking II: Recipes, Flavor, and inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden.